Working group proposes three-tier "peace officer" framework and considers giving POST authority over training

A Connecticut legislative working group spent most of the session reviewing a draft framework that would classify "peace officers" into three tiers and debated who should set training and certification standards for each tier. The chair of the session (S2) introduced the model—limited, specialized and restricted levels—and said the tiers should be tied to jurisdiction and authority rather than to job title alone. "I lean more towards that just because who knows in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years what... what the world is gonna... in terms of technology and other things that law enforcement is facing," S2 said, arguing for administrative flexibility rather than prescriptive statute.

Supporters said giving the POST council authority to map job titles to levels and to set training standards would be more responsive than updating statute for each new job class. S3 described existing training norms to justify deferring to POST: "the program is 921 hours, the basic police training program that gets a recruit to graduation from an academy, and then you have a minimum of 400 of field training that is required to complete before you are initially certified." The group agreed to ask OLR to produce an inventory of statutory job classes and to return with a preliminary spreadsheet at the next meeting to guide classification work.